Date of Completion
2015
Thesis Type
College of Arts and Science Honors
Department
Department of German and Russian
First Advisor
Dennis Mahoney
Keywords
Poetry, German, Translation, Rilke, Sonnets
Abstract
This Honors Thesis Project is a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, a collection of 55 poems written over a period of about three weeks in 1922. The sonnets were written as a “grave-monument” to Wera Ouckhama Knoop, a young family friend of the poet’s, and they address youth and early death through allusions to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, ancient civilizations, and other themes. The translation is an attempt to convey the original language of the sonnets without intentionally considering the rhyme and meter of the German poems, as well as using square brackets to indicate certain embedded clauses. A more in-depth explanation of these aspects, as well as several others included in this new approach to translating this work, is provided in the Introduction.
Recommended Citation
Holding, Aidan C., ""That which cannot be said": A New Approach to Translating Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus" (2015). UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses. 8.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/castheses/8